The Empire of Gut and Bone (20 page)

O
ut in the desert of salt, the Resistance was moving. Mechanical soldiers formed into rows. Whatever they had been trained to do — to cook, to clean — they had put it aside for warcraft. They were prepared to take the city — politely, if possible.

They wore uniforms woven from fibers peeled off the walls of alien lungs. They wore armor forged of metals extracted from cataracts of blood coursing through the Great Body’s veins. They had come far to confront their former masters — to protect their masters, as they told themselves delicately — and they would not back off now.

The Mannequin Resistance, banners raised high, began to march on the city of New Norumbega.

Thoth-Chumley glared down the alley of pastel-painted cabins. “Check all of them,” he said. “Smash down the doors if need be.”

“No!” Brian protested. “Lord Dainsplint might kill Gregory if — ”

“Do it!” yelled Thoth-Chumley, swinging his hand.

There was dust in the air. Thoth-Chumley looked out between the houses at the edge of the city. He saw the first ranks of the Mannequin Resistance approaching.

“We have to drag Dainsplint back to the palace before they get here,” he said, pointing scornfully at the clockwork infantry making their way over the plain.

“I,” said the earl, bowing, “shall make my exit. This may be a moment of mickle hardship, and people may wish for a leader. I have a little thought of who might offer himself in that role.” He gathered his robes about him and made off.

Guards were knocking violently on old doors, demanding to be let in. Brian felt sick with worry.

Dainsplint, Alice, Gwynyfer, and Gregory could hear the guards approaching from each end of the alley, forcing their way into each hut in turn. At the crunch of every door kicked down, Lord Dainsplint’s mouth quivered. He held his gun carefully.

“You can’t win,” said Gregory.

Dainsplint pointed his gun at the boy. “No, old top,
you
can’t.”

Gregory lost feeling in his feet and in his face. He stared at the barrel of the gun.

He kept quiet after that.

Brian watched the clockwork army approaching.

“If someone doesn’t release those mannequin-head prisoners from Delge,” said Brian, “those soldiers out there are going to destroy this city. They can blow us all up, if they want to.”

“We leave these decisions to the heads of state,” said Thoth-Chumley.

“Who are the heads of state? You don’t have a Regent anymore. One of your candidates is in a hut on this street, holding my friend hostage.” Brian was swept with panic and despair.
“There is no one in charge in this city!”
he cried.

A shutter flew open.

“Blast it!” came Lord Dainsplint’s voice. He screamed, “One more step toward this, my pretty little hovel, and I’ll put holes in both the kids’ heads!”

Gregory and Gwynyfer stared at each other in horror. Gwynyfer reached out and took Gregory’s hand. They squeezed each other’s fingers tightly.

The television had been knocked down, but it still was on. Dim lights and shadows wriggled out from under it. Alice sat curled on the bed, her knees up against her face,
her hair mussed over her eyes. Dainsplint sat with the shutters closed almost all the way — with just a slit so he could see anything that passed on the street. He pointed the gun at Gregory.

Brian watched the guards creeping closer and closer to the house where Dainsplint was holed up. “You can’t let them!” he said. “He’ll kill Gregory if they get close!”

“We have to get Lord Dainsplint before the automatons arrive,” the wizard insisted. “They can’t take him prisoner. It would be a disaster.” He shook his head. “Not on my beat.”

Brian watched the guards slinking toward the little blue cabin. He looked out toward the approaching ranks.

There was no hope for escape anywhere.

Inside Alice Nabb’s cabin, they heard footsteps on the dirt.

“Keep off!”
Dainsplint screamed, his eyes rolling toward the window.
“I’ll bloody well take their heads off!”

Gregory held his breath. He could almost feel his own pallor. He felt like he had no blood in him. He wondered if he was going to faint. Gwynyfer’s mouth was open. She clutched Gregory’s hand.

And then came the first slam into the door. Gregory heard Brian scream, distantly, in warning, in protest.

Dainsplint leveled the gun at Gregory. The man drew a deep breath, and —

Gregory watched Chigger whisper the Cantrip of Activation to trigger the gun. The lips moved as if in slow motion. Gregory could almost see the detonation curling out from the muzzle.

But Alice Nabb had thrown herself at Dainsplint a moment before. She landed on him hard, her metal bones yanking against his pliable elfin grip. The gun was pointed toward the wall when it went off — and the wall whickered with the force of the bullet.

Sunlight poured in through the hole.

The door thrashed as guards slammed against it.

Dainsplint fired the gun again, but Alice had forced it up and away. The ceiling rattled. She squeezed his forearm.

The gun fell.

She dragged him backward.

“Alice!” he yelped. “This isn’t the time for the tender embrace and the cooing of dashed sweet nothings!”

She didn’t speak to him. She simply held him. He struggled, belting out, “I say! Let me —”

The guards burst in.

Brian saw the guards bundle Lord Dainsplint out onto the street, handcuffed. Behind him came a blond woman —
and Gwynyfer — and then Gregory, holding Gwynyfer’s hand. Brian couldn’t believe his friend was still alive.

“Come on!” yelled Thoth-Chumley. “The mannequins!” He pointed.

The infantry of the automaton army stood only twenty feet away — hundreds of them.

Brian staggered. There was no way any of them could run. The force ranged against them was overwhelming. They’d never make it back to the palace.

All he could hope for was that Gregory and he would be singled out by the mannequins and saved.

The guards cowered in the face of the army. They held Lord Dainsplint, uncertain of what to do.

Everyone froze.

They looked out between the houses.

The mannequins stared back.

And then a mechanical officer rode up on something armored that might have once been a horse, or a sea horse, or a six-legged industrial stapler. He was yelling a message of hope back to his troops.

“We are arrived,” he declared through a mother-of-pearl bullhorn, “at the walls of New Norumbega. Though these walls be mighty — though they be the work of our masters — we can surmount them! Look at them in their glory — as they sparkle in the veinlight! We could never build such towers! But we can tear them down! With our masters’ implicit permission!”

The army roared. They confronted an empty space where they believed a wall to be.

Thoth-Chumley chuckled, suddenly relaxed. “Such
morons,” he said. “They can’t even see we’re undefended.” He shook his head.

The officer on the mechanical steed raised up a saber and dropped it.

And cannons began to fire.

Huge explosions tore apart the ground, the houses, the streets, the chimneys, the stoves, the dirt all around Brian.

And everyone began pelting, pell-mell, back up toward the palace.

S
crambling through the streets, they felt the great heart rock with cannonades. Walls jumped around them. Gravel fell — who knew from where? People were surging through the streets, screaming. A fiery glow lit tenements and stores and bars.

Brian was running neck and neck with Gregory and Gwynyfer. As they ran, Brian studied the girl’s face. She looked nothing but stern, glaring back down the slope at the mannequins who stood outside their ring of imaginary stone, waiting for invisible walls to tumble down. She set her eyes on the palace, slid them sideways at Brian, then ran past him, dragging Gregory by the hand.

Another round of explosions burst the city asunder.

Houses tore apart. Chunks of balcony hung on electrical lines, swaying, swinging. Wires fell, sparking along the street. Brian threw himself out of the way of one line that went striking past him like some demon worm.

Panicked wails went up from the citizens. The mannequins, trying to save the people, were destroying them.

Another shell hit — quite close — the detonation so loud they felt it in all their bodies.

Brian fell.

There was darkness — things were falling toward him: rocks, concrete, wood, metal roof.

He reached up, as if a soft hand could ward off tumbling stone —

He screamed once.

And the debris smacked into something invisible and slid to the side. Brian lay completely still — seeing the brick crowd the air, ready to pounce down on him. He didn’t understand. He blinked.

Gwynyfer and Gregory were lying next to him. The Wizard Thoth-Chumley knelt near them, holding up his arms, quivering.

“Ski-Jack’s Miraculous Bumbershoot,” the mage explained, nodding toward the glow of his spell in the air. Charred beams slid off a force field above them.

When the trash had fallen, he dropped his hands. A few final things plunged down around them. He took a deep breath.

“Let’s go,” he said, and gave Brian a hand up.

The four of them fled toward the palace.

The throne room smelled of frightened sweat. The folding doors were pulled aside, and across the Grand Hall, out the broken glass doors, the distant armies could be seen, massed by the city’s edge.

The Ex-Emperor Randall Fendritch sat near his wife, looking white and weak. His clothes were too large for him and were cuffed and collared with smudges of dirt. The courtiers around him did not speak. They all were too aghast at the flames they saw reflected in the debris of the Grand Hall.

The Ex-Emperor spoke in a high, anxious voice, though no one listened. He said, “We don’t fear anything. Not really, old top. We’re Norumbegans. Hey-ho, anyone for a round of golf? A gent could exorcise his demons with a few choice chip shots right about now.” A cannonball, trailing smoke, lofted past the windows. There was a loud crash somewhere in the tower. The floor shook. “I say,” said the Ex-Emperor, blinking rapidly. “Speak of the devil. Looks like someone knows his niblick.”

“Oh, do shut up, Randers,” said his wife, bowing her head. “We none of us can understand a word you’re saying.”

The Earl of Munderplast cleared his throat. “This might be a moment for us to think solemnly of the past. Sadly recall the happy days of yesteryear. Stare straight forward. And prepare for the end, which shall come in the next few minutes, I wys.”

Down at the end of Imperial Avenue, where it trailed off into the desert, the mannequins slung a real battering ram into a make-believe portcullis gate, waiting for it to fall.

And then, as Brian and his comrades jogged across the blasted Imperial Square, the bombing stopped.

It took them a moment to realize: The air no longer whistled. There was no longer a rhythm of detonations. They realized that all they still heard was flame and the calls of people rescuing other people. The Mannequin Resistance had ceased their attack for unknown reasons.

They looked at each other in amazement.

They had made it.

Slowly, they walked through the gates, into the palace.

They headed up the grand staircase toward the throne room.

The Court sat gathered around the throne. The floor was covered in fragments of plaster. Everything sparkled with dust. Many of the Court were wounded, and bled on their silks. Hanks of their hair hung out of circlets and cloche hats. Women dressed in sharp pink suits stooped to pick broken glass out of their feet.

There were the Ex-Emperor and the Ex-Empress, the Stub beside them. There were the Earl of Munderplast and Lord Attleborough-Stoughton and the Duke and Duchess of the Globular Colon. There were Kalgrash, Dantsig, Chigger, and Alice, all of them in handcuffs, standing dutifully by the guards. There were maids-in-waiting, Knights of the Bath, governors from far-flung colonies in distant fringes of the circulatory system.

Everyone waited for someone else to speak. No one wanted to be first.

A wind blew in through the broken glass doors. It stirred the plaster dust, and people coughed.

Brian cleared his throat. He said, “Someone should … someone should organize rescue parties or something. Of guards. Maybe. Because people are looking for help out there.”

Courtiers looked anxiously at one another. No one stirred.

“Who?” asked the Ex-Empress Elspeth as if she was wickedly and brilliantly scoring a point. “Who would you like to organize ‘rescue parties'?”

“The Imperial Council,” said Lord Dainsplint, stepping forward, his hands cuffed behind his back. (It gave him a keen debaters’ kind of look.) “I hereby call the Imperial Council to order.”

The Earl of Munderplast rolled his eyes. “My good wight, the Council is in shambles and cannot legally rule. We have no Regent and at least one of our Council members is an assassin who dinged down the previous Regent.”

“I did not!” said Lord Dainsplint. “As I have said, I killed only Gugs.”

The Ex-Empress said, “Yes, you’re rather awful. I do believe he was quite fond of you. I suspect that later this evening we shall all decide to strip you naked and hurl you off the balcony.” She spread her hand dramatically. “Splatters,” she said.

“Then there must be another among us who is guilty
of the assassination,” said the earl. “We cannot rule thus. The Council is riddled with vacancies, madmen, and murderers.”

“I don’t see,” said Lord Dainsplint, “how that is any different than usual business, old man. You just want to sound off in the midst of crisis so the Melancholy Party gets the Regent’s seat.”

They glared at each other across the room. From outside, distantly, came the sound of fires.

“Um, hey,” said Gregory, raising his hand. “Really, someone has to take charge here.”

Ex-Emperor Randall said, “Well, why
not
Chigger? He seems awfully keen. The scepter in his eye and all.”

Chigger bowed. “I should be glad to accept the charge to rule.”

“All that are in favor?” said the Ex-Emperor, raising his hand.

The Earl of Munderplast swept forward and exclaimed, “I demand a full investigation of the Regent’s murder before we put anything to a vote. We cannot allow the Council to be stocked with those who murdered His Excellency.” He frowned. “As opposed to those who planned to, but — oh, night of rue — did not get the chance.”

Everyone looked suspiciously at one another.

“Oh, very well,” said the Ex-Empress Elspeth. “Let’s clear all this up right now. Someone must know by now who punched the old Reejer’s ticket.” She looked around brightly. “Come along. Fess.” She clapped.

No one confessed to the murder.

The earl said grandly, “I accuse Lord ‘Chigger’ Dainsplint of the assassination of the Regent.”

“Utter rot,” said Chigger. “All we need do is take ten minutes to force Alice to speak her memory and you’ll see I was with her all that evening. I am not the guilty party.”

The earl shifted uncomfortably. “There is one other,” he said. He looked briefly at Brian, then at the throne. “Your Highness,” he said, bowing to the Stub, “it may be that Lord Dainsplint, who was, we might well find, not present at the murder, was nonetheless involved with another on the Council who committed the very deed.” He smiled secretively. “Would you not all fall back, astounded, if I revealed who this might be?” He paced back and forth.

Brian glanced at Gwynyfer. She cowered next to Gregory.

The earl said, “It has been brought to my attention that there is one other councillor whose alibi for that fateful night was not adequate. Most of us were with our own beloved and revered Ex-Empress and Ex-Emperor. A few of us were involved in some pleasant and convivial conversation in the basements of this palace. But one claims — one! — claims to have been ‘with his family.’ Yea, my friends — ‘with his family.’ Who are, therefore, the only witnesses that he was not dressed and bedight as a guard, creeping through the corridors of this palace — dirk in hand, murder in his heart — as he sought to kill
our most gracious and beloved Regent in the flower of the man’s youth.”

The earl smiled harshly. “That man is … the Duke of the Globular —”

But before he could even finish, Gwynyfer had let forth a wail. She rushed forward to her father — mustached, sagging in his tux — and she threw her arms around him, saying, “No! Daddy! Daddy!”

Sadly, the man greeted his daughter, mumbling, “The Duke of the Globular Colon greets his daughter, Miss Gwynyfer Gwarnmore, upon this sorrowful day … and wishes —”

“Do you deny it?” cried the earl.

“… and wishes that there shall be brighter days for his beloved daughter in years to come.” The man looked up at the earl. “I, of course, deny it. I was at home with my family. We returned to our manor after the dance. You have no evidence.”

“Do I not?” said the earl. He looked quickly at Brian.
“Do I not?”

Brian was frozen to the spot, watching this unfold in front of him. He didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t ready to accuse anyone. He didn’t know — couldn’t figure out —

And now Gwynyfer faced him, tears running down her cheeks, and said, “Tell them — Brian — tell them what you’ve found. It couldn’t be my father.” She faced the whole Court and screamed, “It
can’t!
You can’t!”

Brian didn’t know. Gregory looked at him angrily. The earl waited. The Court waited.

Gregory walked out in front of them. He glared at Brian, then began. “Lords, ladies,” he said, “Your Highness.” He bowed to the Stub. “The Duke of the Globular Colon could not have committed this murder. The murderer had to disguise himself as Dantsig. That was part of the plan: to make it look like Dantsig was guilty. Whoever it was stuck on a fake beard like Dantsig. So whoever it was
could not have had a white mustache, too — as the duke does
!” He pointed furiously at the duke.

“I say,” said the duke. “No need to point at my ‘stache.”

“By the breath of the Morrigan!”
the Ex-Empress swore.
“It must have been one of you on the Council! Will someone simply accuse someone else who can’t make excuses? So we can be done with it?”

The Wizard Thoth-Chumley did not look comfortable. He stared down at his notebook and scribbled something.

Meanwhile, Brian had just realized something. He had just thought about the murder in a way he’d never thought about it before. He’d just realized one thing that had blinded him all along. He looked around wildly: noble faces strained and confused; chalky dust lit with shafts of sunlight; the Stub, his eye wheeling wildly; battered drones clanking forward with sandwiches. He saw things he’d never seen before.

He said, “Excuse me. Excuse me.” He walked to Gregory’s side. “I think I know who killed the Regent, and why.”